Pokémon Truth
by SaulJoker
Summary: When a young, socially awkward guy finds an unusual fossil in Oreburgh Mine, he decides it's time for him to become something bigger than a "live-in-your-basement" teen. Friends, enemies, and many Pokémon to meet, but in a realistic, non-forgiving world, will he give up at the slightest or meet his troubles face on?
1. Prologue

**Prologue - Ruins beneath Sinnoh**

Ah, yes, this was definitely one of those moments where one would typically suspire: "Fuck."

Young, naive, adventurous, it's the ideal traits for a protagonist. While young he may be, he's neither of the latter - that's a fact. Which begs the question of how he managed to get encumbered with boulders within 5 mere minutes of entering Oreburgh Mine. The whole situation was a joke to his character really. While not afraid, he always approached with his surroundings in mind and pretended to think one step ahead (had he actually done so, perhaps he'd already be back at the Pokémon Center, and you would never be reading this. Go figure.)

Despite reading the manual included with the Miner's kit he had just purchased from the Pokémart, and drilling into his conscience _not_ to hammer the weak spots on the wall, he'd decided to challenge the limits of stupidity. In his defense, however, the wall looked pretty sturdy from his point of view. Nevertheless, he hammered away, shattering the complex network of rocks and gems that kept the wall together within that corridor of the mine. As boulders and gravel descended upon him, the only course of action left to take is to take refuge in whatever way possible. The entrance was too far away to reach due to the speed the ceiling was also collapsing at, and he had no Pokémon that would be able to help him out. Perks of being a shut-in, top percentage procrastinator. Countless times had he the chance to obtain his first Pokémon – most notably when Professor Oak visited from the Kanto region on his research trip –, countless times had he ignored it.

As he approached a nearby large rock to lean on for cover, he noticed an oddly shaped, brownish plate resembling a shell falling along with the rocks. While he likely knew what it was, the situation at hand did not let him shift much focus toward it.

Suddenly, a muscular, short silhouette appeared from the left side of the furthest corridor connecting with his. It seemed to be running, but as it reached the cross which connected both corridors, it paused and turned to face him. It leaned forward and stood up on the tip of its left foot in an attempt to gain a better view of the corridor. It seemed to notice him, and approached hurriedly, with one arm over its forehead attempting to diminish the rubble hitting its face. He soon realized this figure was actually a Machoke.

"Choke! Maaaa-machoke!" it desperately called while pointing backwards with its index finger.

"Thank you, Machoke. Please, break of the boulders that fall in front of us!" he begged with his raspy voice.

"Choke!" it replied, as it nodded in agreement.

As he got up to follow Machoke out of the mine, he quickly reached for the plate-like rock he had noticed earlier, wrapped it around his chest with both arms, and ran. Turn left! Turn right! Dodge! Duck! So hurriedly they sprinted that only simple instructions occupied his mind. Machoke swung his hand in a rigid stance left and right, breaking boulders with his Karate Chop. This was no joke, not even for Machoke. If they didn't reach the entrance of the cave before the entire mine potentially collapsed on them, they could possibly be trapped between boulders for a little while. A little while being, if lucky, a few weeks. Which also begs the question as to how a lean 17-year-old who's never held a tool in his hand was allowed to go into a mine unsupervised, and how could anyone actually work down there if the entire network of tunnels could collapse with a wrong swing of a pickaxe.

Regardless, they were already climbing the leading stairs as the light began to reach his eyes from the entrance. As the rumbling stopped, and the ceiling stopped crumbling, they also stopped in response. As they both sighed and caught their breath, they exchanged eye contact, and after a short pause smiled and giggled.

"Thank you for your help Machoke. I think I can handle myself from here."

"Ma, ma-choke!" it replied as it turned away and walked out of the cave.

It's moments like these when one is grateful for having Pokémon like Machoke working nearby. While the mine was fairly quiet that night, some have to take care of the work done at that time of the day in order to maintain productivity. The town was surely awake by now, however. It's also moments like these when one wonders "What if…?" For all he knows he might have never made it past the first corridor. As he looked down and extended his arms to look at the rock he carried with him, he confirmed his suspicion that it was indeed a Pokémon Fossil.

A few police bikes pulled over, and as the agents got off with their accompanying Growlithe, he walked out to face the commotion he had just caused. The intense light of the work-lamps of the mine greeted him, along with the smaller ones of the flashlights of the police officers.

"Don't move! Stand still and wait for us to approach!"

As he relievedly waited for the police officers to give him clearance to move, he slowly realized they weren't protecting him. They approached carefully with their Growlithe, and as they surrounded him, he sighed. As the fossil was taken from him, and his hands cuffed behind his back, he let out a small grunt:

"Fuck."


	2. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1 – Questions**

 _~~ AN: Sorry for the delay on this one, from now on chapters may or may not be released within a week of the last one. School keeps me busy for the most part as well as other commitments. At the latest, 3 weeks between chapters, and I'll make sure it stays that way. Also, I've decided to discontinue the BGM recommendations. ~~_

"Name, age and occupation" stated the officer in the interrogation room.

"Sooru, 17, unemployed" he replied, in a calm, concise manner, looking diagonally in a downward motion towards the floor.

"No last name?" questioned the officer, with an intrigued look on her face.

As Sooru and the officer's eyes met, he shook his head and murmured:

"Not really, no."

The officer sighed, and stood up with her notepad and the pen she used to write on her left and right hands respectively. Sooru followed intently with his gaze. The officer was young-looking - she could not be older than her mid-twenties - and had a ponytail made from her darkish brown, tangled and yet pristine hair, which was mostly covered by her officer cap. Slim, but not thin, her figure was slightly lean. She had caramel, oily skin, and she was also shorter than Sooru – he stood at 5'8 while she was 5'7. One could say she was 'well-endowed' in the area around her cervix, and while her bosom did not appear voluminous due to the traditional officer's outfit she wore, it was large enough to stand out from a mere glance compared to her overall body mass. Her legs were smooth, almost gleaming with pureness, as if emollient was regularly covering them. Her eyes were benign in nature yet sharp in concern whenever an issue arised, and her nose was acute as if one could caress it and feel the soothing breath of her being slightly levitate across the hand. Her lips were colored with an astonishing red, but not from lipstick, rather from the natural color one could infer she developed over the years of her fruitful childhood. Her arms, thin, yet powerful enough to subdue a rabid Bunnelby, would complete her idiosyncratic figure, and ultimately, her.

"You know we need a last name to find your records, don't make me have to search the database" she whined with a frustrated look on her face.

"There aren't that many Soorus in Sinnoh, I doubt you'll have trouble finding my picture in there" he asserted as he shrugged with his right shoulder a little higher than his other.

Neither of them wanted to be there, not at that time of night anyways. While the officer would rather be sleeping, or watching a movie in her couch with some popcorn, Sooru was unexcitedly hoping he'd get to take a closer look at the fossil he had found that night. The officer sighed again, but this time it was a longer, much heavier sigh, like she knew he wasn't looking like he was going to cooperate. She sat down on a chair near one of the desks on the right side of the room which had a computer hooked up to it, and pressed the power button near the bottom of it with her index finger. Then, once the system had powered up and sent her to the desktop, she began typing on the keyboard. Unknown to him, she actually hadn't written anything down in her notepad, she just traced the words about 2 centimetres off the notepad. She already knew Sooru.

Since Sooru rarely ever left the house let alone interact with many people, he never really took notice of who lived around town, not even his neighbor. He took one shopping trip to the mart every once in a while, with the money he'd earn from his online webpage, but that was it. Apart from paying for utilities, which were relatively cheap considering he really only consumed electricity, the rest was spent on food and his webpage, which could be described as a "news review site". He'd take recent articles and comment on them, usually expanding on them with mildly checked facts and his own views. While he barely had any followers and few visitors, the ad revenue was borderline enough to pay for the rationed life he lived.

The officer attempted to hide her curiousness beneath her tiredness, but nevertheless she began to make smalltalk:

"You're that kid who lives in 86 right?" she asked.

Sooru acknowledged her inquiry: "Yeah. Surprised people still know me."

"What do you do down there? Didn't you go to the trainer school in Jubilife?"

"I did. I used to, I mean. I just get by now. Guess it wasn't for me" he replied, trying to formulate a thought.

"It's the easiest thing to pass, and yet, you didn't even bother with it. Guess procrastination knows no limits."

She scolded him like he was some sort of delinquent, but when she pulled up his record she was surprised to find it was empty. No previous felonies, no reports, no arrests. Nothing. Clean as a Spoink's pearl. She leaned back on her chair as her eyes widened a little with a brow raised. The officer spoke up.

"Odd day today. You spend your time inside a dark room, and yet here you are, 3am, in the interrogation room, with dust and dirt on your clothes, a set of mining tools, and some sort of stone which you were _adamant_ about handling carefully. Odd as odd can be."

"Aren't you going to ask 'What gives?' or 'What's the meaning of this?' or something?" he inquired.

"No. Honestly, I don't care, and I can't be bothered writing up a report. You're clean, and that mine is bound to collapse anyways. Roark keeps shrugging it off and saying that if it collapses it will only allow them to further amplify their scope of searching. For what, I don't know, maybe that stone of yours."

"So… is that it then?"

"Hmm?"

"I mean, am I free to go?" he clarified.

"No. You're going to tell me what you've been doing for the past 6 months in that place of yours before you leave this room, or I'll make you do community hours for disturbance of a public establishment."

"The mine isn't open to the public though" Sooru questioned.

"I wasn't talking about the mine. But you bring up another point which only digs your own grave, ironically: I'm ninety-nine percent sure you weren't supposed to be there tonight."

Sooru realized his mistake, and looked away from the officer towards the ground. "You said you didn't care, what's it with the blackmail now?" he asked, a little concerned.

"Tell me what you are doing in your house and why you were in the mine today" the officer asserted.

"I'd rather not."

"I wasn't asking" she asserted once more.

Sooru remained silent. After a while, the officer explained:

"Your friend was worried. Says he knows you from Snowpoint City. I got an e-mail a few weeks back, and I was supposed to check up on you but you never opened the door, and there was no concern large enough for me to break into your house so I never did."

Sooru shook his head. "I do not know anyone from there. Who sent you this?" he asked, now more concerned.

"He didn't give many details. Some 'Xander' guy" she explained.

Sooru pondered on the thought of this 'friend'. He hadn't traveled to Snowpoint City in his life, and yet here was this person claiming to know him from there. Could it be someone who follows his webpage? Perhaps a fan or someone he's interacted with online? The chance was so slim that he disregarded this possibility, but it wasn't outright impossible.

"I'm planning to travel to Snowpoint City soon to see my sister. I could take you with me and…"

"I don't know him. Not personally at least. Thank you though" he pronounced sharply as he cut in.

The officer printed some files from the computer and stapled them together, then opened a cabinet and deposited them in it. As she stood up to walk back to the centre table's chair, Sooru pointed at the fossil:

"What are you planning to do with that?" he asked, as if he had some uncertainty as to whether or not he'd get to keep it.

"Well you never stole that fossil, because it is a fossil, right? I don't see why you want it otherwise. and the mine is, legally, a public space. So, I don't see why you can't keep it. If you're interested in reviving it though, you'll have to go to the research lab: you'll find out more about the fossil that way."

"And you think they won't just keep the fossil and throw some 'legal' document in my face which denies my ownership of it? And I thought I didn't know the town…" Sooru complained.

The officer sat for a moment thinking before speaking up:

"If you had a Trainer's License this wouldn't be a problem. For now, I'll give you a written document which certifies your ownership, we use these for freelance miners and researchers that come to the town to work on the mine. Just make sure you fill it in properly. If it's revived though, then I can't guarantee whether it'll still be yours or not."

Sooru nodded and stood up, wiping dust off his still dirty dark, navy jeans. As he walked towards the door, the officer grabbed his wrist, making Sooru turn to face her. Sooru didn't turn back, but stopped, once he heard her shuffle in the chair.

"Be careful. If it's not me next time you won't get off this easy" she warned.

"There won't be a next time" Sooru asserted.

As Sooru began to pull the door to walk out, the officer turned to face him and spoke up:

"Sooru, don't your parents worry about you?" she worriedly inquired.

"They say as long as I'm happy and not causing trouble, that they won't complain. They want me to study or become a trainer but I think they've given up on me" he justified.

"And have you?" she further questioned.

"Well, I hope not. Otherwise I'll have to give this fossil to Roark" he smirked.

Sooru walked out and turned towards the walkway that lead to his home. As he was walking out, he wasn't really sure if that last remark he used was really him. Since when did he have any type of wit to make such comments? Regardless, Sooru was glad he'd gotten out of the situation without any major issues. There was just one concern left in his mind: who was this Xander? It was around 3:30 am when he received his answer, as he picked up his phone after it vibrated twice in short intermissions.

"My name is Evelyn, i was kinda hoping u would know that. Sorry if I seemed pushy, but idk what u expect when we hear an earthquake-like noise so late in the night" he read from a text he had received at the time. Not on his contacts list, which had about 3 or 4 phone numbers - not including his parents.

"I should ask how you got this number but I'd be oblivious to do so. I hope you know this is illegal, right?" he texted back.

About a minute or so later he received the following text:

"You ask too many questions, maybe I need to keep u in a cell until tomorrow."

Before he could reply, he received yet another text: "And about that Xander guy… yeah he doesn't actually exist. I made that up cause i was worried about you. Well, not really, but u get the point."

And annoyedly, yet half-jokingly, Sooru sent the following message in return:

"So, you lie in my face, blackmail me with potentially judiciary threats, and now text my private phone number which you obtained from the database. What a great way to become acquaintances."

"Do u always text like that? Cause if so tell me now so I can find someone more interesting to talk to" she protested.

"I should report you for harassment" he deftly replied.

"We both know u want someone to talk to, Sooru" Evelyn bargained.

"And I know you want to talk to me too. TTYL" he concluded, as he locked and returned his phone to his front pocket, took out his keys from the opposite - all while swapping the arms he held the fossil with - and opened the entrance to his home, where he'd likely not rest in again for a long time.


End file.
